Artist: Christine Plays Viola
Title: Innocent Awareness
Genre: Goth / Post-Punk / Dark Wave
Release Date: 10th June 2011
Label: af-music
Album Review
It´s always a precarious situation, if you´re about to listen to a band’s debut album, whose music is advisedly framed by tags like THE CURE, JOY DIVISION, SIOUXSIE´S BANSHEES and NEPHILIM, especially if all these names are to find in the upper ranks of the personal “All-time-favourites” charts! How to react? With an uplifted eyebrow or with marked expectation? Meanwhile outside storm clouds are gathering I remember I´ve chosen a way between and even if I´m going to kill some stylistic tension now – I really enjoyed what I heard!
CHRISTINE PLAYS VIOLA are a relatively young outfit, founded in 2008 in a small town in the middle of Italy. (It seems some shapes have shifted over the last years, because this is the 4th Italian band in a row I have to write about! But that´s out of topic now...)
After appearing on some compilations and a self-released EP, the boys took successfully part in some local band contests, made the first place of the “Orquestra 6 Alternative Contest”, the most significant event for Italian alternative music. This and their diligent performance quickly increased the bands reputation at home and abroad, crowned with a deal with the German label af-music and this current full-length album ‘Innocent Awareness’.
While listening, it immediately attracts attention that the above named bands didn’t became a bargain counter for ideas and strategies, but more of a reflection of moods and effects, woven in the songs’ anatomies. CPV´s musical language is pleasantly based on a classical generic instrumentation, featuring organically pumping drums, foggy and swirling bass guitars, straight and atmospheric guitar work and a few supporting electronic sparks and samples, whose collaboration creates convincingly moody landscapes that range from energetic Post Punk to sinister Dark Wave. All this is held together by the remarkable vocals of Massimo Ciampani (former singer of the Italian Melancholic-Metal band Rome Oblivio). I honestly had to check twice if there´s only one singer in the band and if my information is right for it´s amazing how the voice is able to switch from a crooning, lower-scale timbre (with occasional flashes of Mr. Ian Curtis) to a sound that Mr. Smith didn’t do better in the early eighties! (And if two voices were involved, it wouldn’t have any influence on the impact at all!)
So much for my first impression and now some details:
The whirring intro leads openly to the really cool ‘Swallowed Cold Insanity’ that contains everything an opening track needs. It packs the whole albums energy and atmosphere in straight tunes that jump from a Goth-rocking first part to a psychedelic wave you also could find on Cure´s ‘Pornography’ (most notably for its vocals and the tribal drum work). ‘Witch of Silence’ welcomes you with a warm melancholy and pushes you out on a frozen sea of nihilism. Slightly oriental keys are whizzing through a brake of restless toms, pervaded by sawing guitars that call you to a lawn of gloomy piano sounds. It´s pure joy to follow the stylistic path of the songs, whose direction is marked by great arranged atmosphere and the dichotomy of the vocals. Best to find in the velvet and comforting ‘Four Steps In Your Hole’ and the toxic ‘Failed To Connect To Heart’.
The melodic title track shines with its countless layers, of which every single one seems filled with different details, for unfurling in combination a variety of feelings and conditions, seducing your acoustic perception in a blurry tide of the genres. Next turn is ‘Admire a New Demise’, a mousy jewel whose minimalistic arrangement brings out the red carpet for the yearning vocals, guided by smith-like guitar shores, which cover you with a hypnotic veil of sadness. What else is there to say? The clinical cold of ‘Permutations’, the shy positivism of ‘The Parchment Sand’ and the sweet despair of ‘I Was Wrong’ – there´s no song, which fails the intensity and the coherence of the albums enjoyable flow. (Maybe the instrumental ‘Regressive Self Abnegation’ quarrels a bit with the revelation of an obvious function, but it´s more a sentiment than a flaw!)
‘Innocent Awareness’ is a debut that is an impressing piece of work, technically and quality-wise. It´s the most impeccable way to bow your head to your musical influences without falling for the facility of plagiarism, instead offering them a place at the table of stimulation and inspiration. It´s an album full of great songs, which own catchy arrangements and effective harmonies and melodies, woven in an atmospheric shade that crawls in your ear for occupying body and soul. I bet there will be great things still to come from Christine and her Viola!
Tracklist
01. Albatross
02. Swallowed Cold Insanity
03. Witch of Silence
04. Four Steps in your Hole
05. Innocent Awareness
06. Regressive Self Abnegation
07. Admire a new Demise
08. Permutations
09. The parchment Sand
10. Failed to connect to Heart (Endline)
11. I was wrong
Line-up
Massimo Ciampani - Voice
Fabrizio Giampietro - Lead Guitar
Desio Presutti - Bass Guitar
Daniele Palombizio – Drums
Website
www.christineplaysviola.it
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 9
Sound: 9
Extras: -
Total: 9 / 10
Comments powered by CComment